The Paris prosecutor’s office on Saturday, February 14 announced it was setting up a special team of magistrates to analyse files relating to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The new team will work closely with prosecutors from the national financial crimes unit and police with a view to opening investigations into any suspected crimes involving French nationals, the office told AFP.

As part of that initiative, they will be reopening their files on the late Jean-Luc Brunel, a former French modeling agency executive. The aim is “to be able to extract any piece that could be usefully reused in a new investigative framework,” said prosecutors.

Brunel, who had links with Epstein, was found dead in his cell in a Paris prison in 2022 after having been charged with raping minors.

Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for trafficking children, in what the US authorities ruled was a suicide.

Several French public figures feature in the latest US Department of Justice release of material from the Epstein files, though being mentioned there does not in itself mean any offence has been committed.